1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to measuring a quality of experience on a wireless network. More particularly, the invention relates to switching to a different network based on the measurements.
2. Description of Related Art
The increasing use of the networks to access information has resulted in a greater dependence on network communication for a variety of activities. With this dependence comes the growing expectation that network access will be ubiquitous. Network access for mobile users has been particularly enhanced by improvements in wireless technology.
Unfortunately, assessing the quality of a wireless network consumes resources on mobile devices as well as the wireless network. As a result, assessing the quality of a wireless network may cause the quality of the network to diminish and result in unnecessary data traffic. For example, traditional “speed test” type applications assess quality by downloading and uploading large amounts of data, and hence do not scale well, incur data traffic costs, and could affect other users of the network by swamping the backhaul data connection to a Wi-Fi access point.